Barracuda Web Security and Filtering provides advanced features including AD Integration, ensuring ease of use in application control and content filtering. It is known for cost-effectiveness and effective phishing threat mitigation with intuitive DNS and URL filtering capabilities.


| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Barracuda Web Security and Filtering | 1.1% |
| Zscaler Internet Access | 10.0% |
| Cisco Umbrella | 9.7% |
| Other | 79.2% |
| Type | Title | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Secure Web Gateways (SWG) | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Product | Reviews, tips, and advice from real users | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Barracuda Web Security and Filtering vs Cisco Umbrella | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Barracuda Web Security and Filtering vs Fortinet FortiGate | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Barracuda Web Security and Filtering vs Zscaler Internet Access | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Title | Rating | Mindshare | Recommending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fortinet FortiGate | 4.2 | 6.7% | 92% | 592 interviewsAdd to research |
| iboss | 4.2 | 3.4% | 95% | 22 interviewsAdd to research |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 6 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 1 |
| Large Enterprise | 1 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 32 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 13 |
| Large Enterprise | 33 |
This solution allows organizations to control web traffic efficiently, filter unwanted sites, and block P2P applications. It is valued for its ease of setup, navigation, and comprehensive reporting options. Users benefit from its ability to safeguard against online threats and protect both on-premises and cloud web applications. However, some challenges include hardware stability, web interface speed, and the need for better DNS filtering off-site. Enhancement is needed in areas like WAN optimization, database flexibility, support, and modern features such as sandboxing and improved web security through signature updates.
What are the key features of Barracuda Web Security and Filtering?In industries where web security is critical, Barracuda Web Security and Filtering is implemented to protect web applications and ensure secure staff web traffic management. Organizations use it for blocking unauthorized site access and preventing phishing and malware threats through its robust filtering and reporting capabilities.
Barracuda Web Security and Filtering was previously known as Barracuda Web Security Gateway, Barracuda Web Filter.
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| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Assistant Product Manager at Mentholatum (Asia Pacific) Limited | 3.0 | I use Barracuda Web Security and Filtering primarily for blocking phishing emails, appreciating its flexible policy settings, but I wish it offered a Sandbox for link examination and more comprehensive email tracing. I've considered no other solutions. |
| Manager, Systems, Information Technology at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees | 3.0 | We find Barracuda Web Security valuable for its effective website filtering and torrent blocking but see room for improvement in user-friendliness, reporting flexibility, and technological updates to compete with solutions like Cisco Umbrella for web security enhancements. |
| Director at Renfrew Victoria Hospital | 4.0 | We use Barracuda Web Security for its web-based cybersecurity features, benefiting from its cost-effective pricing compared to other solutions like Cisco Umbrella. However, it lacks off-site DNS filtering capabilities and struggles to block certain URLs. |
| CTO at GCET | 3.5 | I use Barracuda Web Security and Filtering to safeguard web applications both on-premises and in the cloud via Microsoft Azure. I appreciate its simplicity and ease of use, though improvement in customer support is needed. |
| Director at Renfrew Victoria Hospital | 4.0 | I used Barracuda Web Security Gateway for web filtering and found it easy to manage due to its extensive range of checkboxes and configuration options. Although effective in blocking malicious content, the pricing could be improved for better value. |
| IT Manager at a insurance company with 51-200 employees | 4.0 | I primarily use Barracuda Web Security Gateway for filtering staff web traffic and generating usage reports, which offers valuable insight and control. While effective, integration in Citrix environments needs improvement. The visible ROI stems from preventing access to malicious sites. |
| CTO at GCET | 4.5 | I find Barracuda Web Security Gateway stable and scalable with fantastic support, superior to competitors. However, the AD agent is unstable, making initial setup complex. Despite this, I rate it highly, valuing its filtering paths and reasonable pricing. |
| Solutions Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees | 3.5 | I find Barracuda easy to use for web filtering and it's generally stable. However, a major design flaw prevents migrating the virtual appliance to new platforms, and support couldn't help, which is my biggest frustration with the product. |
| Pre-Sales Consultant at Tarsus Cloud On Demand | 4.0 | No summary available |
| Pre-Sales Consultant at Tarsus Cloud On Demand | 4.0 | I find Barracuda Web Filter excellent for application and content filtering, offering easy setup and significant ROI. It's stable, scalable, and consolidates security, though I'd appreciate better WAN optimization in the future. |

The most valuable features are Barracuda's policies for filtering various websites according to the organization's policies and blocking traffic for any P2P application like torrents. We discourage torrents, though a lot of people want to use them. The torrent application doesn't require any admin privileges. You can run it on your system. Barracuda is good at blocking torrent activity.
Apart from that, considering other tier-one applications, like Next-Generation Firewall, they also have web security in-built within their appliances or applications. Barracuda is still lagging behind in features like that, so they need to update if they want to be in the top spot.
Other features I'd like to see in Barracuda Features are ease-of-use for remote users. If you are a roaming user using an organization laptop, the organization has the right to apply the policy. When you are on-premises, you are opening the policy, not out-of-premises. The application that Barracuda Web Security Gateway provides is pretty clumsy and not very easy to work with, and they need to develop that. Either they provide a test platform that redirects the traffic or vice versa.
Moreover, the database is pretty average. Barracuda needs to enhance the database to stop unsolicited traffic. Reporting also needs to be quicker than it is. Barracuda doesn't give you any flexibility to provide reports to higher management. Organizations like us need to do a lot of reporting. When we submit our quarterly report, other appliances allow us to customize or get the reports in a way Barracuda can't because it is rigid with its reporting. Barracuda needs to give users the flexibility to create their reports. The reports offered by the solution are just fine. Finally, acceleration. Right at this moment, most websites are dynamic. For example, organizational websites get updated once a month. If Barracuda can help reduce bandwidth usage and accelerate browsing performance by analyzing these sorts of sites and doing their catching technology work accordingly.
Barracuda should also include DNSSEC, which offers strong protection for web security and is offered by competitors. Barracuda should also up their game for scanning and sandboxing. Likewise, their signatures need augmented intelligence or machine learning because you won't always be able to appraise things, and sometimes you have to go beyond that. You need to block it through its behavior.
We've been using Barracuda for about four years now.
I rate Barracuda's stability a six out of ten.
Technical support is very poor. We dropped a lot of Barracuda appliances because of the service. In 2015, the support used to come from the USA or Mexico. Support was extremely good, and then they probably outsourced it to India. Initially, it was good, but it went somewhere. There is no proper solution to talk with the support, and you need to wait one and a half weeks or so to get a proper solution from them. That's a long time for a small solution sometimes.
We use cross-platform technology with other OEMs, for example, Cisco, Juniper, and products from Dell and HP. Every OEM has its warehouse here in our country. Whenever there is a replacement issue, you generate a ticket, and the tech will let us know if it is required to replace anything, and they will replace it quickly. But Barracuda doesn't have any local warehouses. The funny thing is that the Web Security Gateway is currently offline at our premises because of some issue with their client. It was not working properly, so we raised a ticket. After chasing them for nearly one and a half weeks, they came with the appliance that needed to be changed and then mailed us that we had to pay the logistic fee of $593, which is ridiculous. I have paid Barracuda for the Analyzer and also for the IR. It was not the first time they were taking a fee from me because I was renewing the service each year for four or five years, so they should have taken care of logistics if there was a replacement facility in place. They cannot ask for a logistic fee because they don't have the required device in a nearby warehouse. That's their strategic mistake.
Negative
We've been using Barracuda in our organization since 2019. Before that, we used numerous products like Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Barracuda Web Application Firewall, Barracuda Web Security Gateway, and Barracuda Load Balancer. But now, we are only keeping the Barracuda Web Security Gateway because we are still looking for a suitable solution to protect our web-based security, such as Cisco Umbrella. We are assessing the capabilities because we are not all happy with the performance. If you configure Cisco's and Barracuda's technology, Barracuda is now prehistoric in a way. They need to up their game and make a massive changeover to the technology they currently offer to end users.
The product deployment was straightforward. There was no problem deploying the product initially, but this was four or five years back. The technology-enhanced detection and other facilities with competitors like Cisco and other OEMS are far more advanced. Barracuda needs to update.
Barracuda products are cheap, but their service is awful, and their technology is totally backdated. Barracuda will be fine if you are automated, but we need to search for other options. We are scouting and testing the feasibility of other products to see which ones we can adopt to get better service.
I rate Barracuda Web Security and Filtering a six out of ten.

We use the solution for its web-based cybersecurity features.
The solution helps users with quick web filtering through the DNS portal. It allows them to filter, block, or restrict specific websites or URL paths. Also, it enables blocking a few users on Facebook and allowing particular users. They can access activity logs based on user, domain, categories, and locations to identify suspicious activity around the system.
Its reporting feature is easy to use, interactive, and multi-layered. The users can generate reports based on web activity and usage in terms of time. Also, it has in-built alerts to communicate in case of any issues. In addition, it integrates with many solutions, including Barracuda Firewall and Barracuda Email Security, etc.
The solution has the best pricing. It costs considerably less than Cisco Umbrella and many other popular solutions like Palo Alto. Also, working with Barracuda suppliers helps significantly. They allow extending the trial period to 60 days from 20 days. You can request an extension from your representative to showcase all the blocked phishing attempts and the flagged websites. It allows you to generate comprehensive reports for your management team to review. In addition, it has intuitive features for DNS and URL filtering.
The solution doesn't allow adding DNS filtering for off-site clients. It only works if you have implemented web security with Barracuda Email Protection. Also, our clients encountered instances where websites instructed them to call fake tech support. We couldn't block many of these URLs by using the filters available. They should improve these particular areas.
I have been using the solution for five years.
The solution is stable. We never encountered any stability issues.
I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten.
The solution's initial setup was simple and super fast. It's straightforward to deploy and manage.
The solution works effectively in preventing any glitches or malware in our system. Thus, it generates a return on investment for us.
The solution is cost-effective.
The solution is worth the investment. We have been using Barracuda since 2009. Its cost is perfect, and it releases constant updates for services.
Also, its technical team provides immediate and top-tier support for customers using multiple Barracuda products. They reply within 20 minutes in case of queries.
I suggest requesting an extended demo to prove its value. They provide an extended trial and technical assistance multiple times during the trial period. This way, you can run the product in the background, know the process, and build the reports for the management team. So, you have the necessary justification to move forward.
Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use Barracuda Web Security and Filtering to protect web applications on-prem and in the cloud.
I like the simplicity of the entire solution itself. The solution is very simple to use and implement. Barracuda Web Security and Filtering is a good product for simplicity and delivery.
The solution’s customer support should be improved.
Barracuda Web Security and Filtering is a stable solution.
Our clients have 200 to 300 users using Barracuda Web Security and Filtering.
I don't get good support for Barracuda Web Security and Filtering as I used to get two years ago. The support team takes longer to respond than it used to do before. When they respond, the people who respond do not define the problem properly. They keep wasting time on things that they shouldn't waste time on.
The solution’s initial setup is easy.
The solution's pricing is neither cheap nor expensive.
I would recommend Barracuda Web Security and Filtering to other users because of its security and stability. Barracuda support used to be very good, but now Barracuda support is not so good.
Overall, I rate Barracuda Web Security and Filtering a seven out of ten.

We used Barracuda Web Security Gateway for web filtering.
I like that it does a lot of malicious content and is easy to manage. There are a lot of checkboxes, and you can add your own URLs or get it preconfigured.
The price could be better.
Barracuda Web Security Gateway is very stable.
Tech support is good. I never had an issue getting through or with the tech. If they had never heard of the problem before or didn't know how to solve it, they would get another person on the line to help. At Cisco, they would tell you to arrange a call with someone else, which will occur a few hours later.
Positive
The price could be better. Barracuda started adding more features at the end of 2022. There was no price increase if you bought the maintenance package before the end of 2022. If you signed a three-year contract, you are lucky because there won't be a price increase on those features. Their pricing has increased if you wanted to install all of their features. But they are segmenting. You can buy the whole group, or you can get pieces. But it's tedious. The cost is getting higher than it should.
On a scale from one to ten, I would give Barracuda Web Security Gateway an eight.
Our primary use case for Barracuda Web Security Gateway is filtering our staff's web traffic and generating reports on their usage. It is a huge benefit to be able to see their user activity. It ensures that we can control which sites they visit and prevent any potential threats from web traffic.
I have found the most valuable the ability to have insight into our web traffic and control its flow.
I think that the integration in a Citrix environment should be improved as people are deployed via shared desktops.
I have been using this solution for about nine years.
My opinion is that this solution is quite stable and pretty good. We've had to replace a couple of appliances over the nine years. I, myself, have replaced three appliances; two were replaced because of issues and one because I needed to upgrade it to install the latest firmware.
With the model that we have, this solution is quite scalable. We had to jump to a higher model for their increments for the amount of staff that it would support. We own a model that is basically overkill for our infrastructure just because we hit the point where it was bigger than their starter appliance.
My opinion is that Barracuda's customer service is great.
Barracuda Web Security Gateway is a premise device, so I am definitely involved in the deployments. The deployments are relatively straightforward. The devices are quite easy to get online. It just takes a bit of time to tweak all your specific rules to your organization. Just one person is required for deployment.
The ROI is visible. We have on-site staff. We often have to step in and identify and rectify situations in which they browse malicious sites.
This solution is substantially more expensive than the competitors out there, including Titan HQ or Limecast. They're more on the spam side, but their solutions are higher priced without a doubt. There is no extra cost to this solution. You know what you're getting.
We are actually looking to migrate to a different solution. The one major pain point I have with Barracuda is basic clear around renewal. We typically bind a three-year term. Their price increases are quite substantial and far beyond what competitors ask.
Overall, I would rate the Barracuda solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I recently deployed a PDF version for a customer, the most recent one.
What I found to be most fascinating and valuable are the filtering paths which provide similar access for allowing administrators to filter unwanted sites.
The AD agent is an issue which my customers and I have encountered. Sometimes it refuses to start and, only as time goes by, does it become apparent that things are not working the way they should.
The AD domain should have stable agents.
I have been using Barracuda Web Security Gateway for quite a while, six years now.
The product is very stable.
The solution is scalable.
The solution provides comparatively better support than that of the competition, something I consider to be paramount for addressing the inevitable issues which arise in the ICT world.
The support is fantastic, which is one of the reasons that I love the solution.
I have used a host of products prior to that of Barracuda Web Security Gateway, including Sophos, Cisco and ISA Microsoft, which nearly everyone made use of.
Barracuda Web Security Gateway provides better support than that of the competition. While they all offer similar features and each comes with its relative strengths in different areas, I consider the support to be the one which is most important, as things can always go awry in the ICT world.
The initial setup is complex. The Active Directory Agent is not stable, with the service occasionally refusing to start. It would be a big help if the dashboard were to provide an alert when there is a lack of connectivity.
The pricing and licensing are comparatively reasonable.
I use the solution both in my customers' and my company.
There are over 500 people using it in my customers' company.
The solution allows us to resolve nearly all of our web feature-related issues.
I rate Barracuda Web Security Gateway as a nine-and-a-half out of ten.
We're using it for web filtering and blocking of sites that we don't want to allow traffic to.
For the most part, it's working okay.
It's the ease of use in either blocking or whitelisting a web address. That is the plus.
The ease of use. It's pretty easy to use and navigate the UI.
Our problem is that it's a virtual appliance and we're moving to a new platform and, for whatever reason, we can't move it as it is. That's why we are looking for a different option. When we were migrating our virtual machines from the old to the new system, we determined rather quickly that it wouldn't migrate over.
Relatively, the stability is pretty good, as far as our history goes.
The problem lies in the fact that it's not able to be moved to our new system and the Barracuda engineers couldn't figure it out either. It's definitely a flaw in design there.
We were in touch with tech support in our attempts to move Barracuda to our new platform, unsuccessfully. I would rate technical support at six out of 10. If they're not able to help us get their product over to a new platform, that's not very good. It's a little bit frustrating.
I inherited it without any documentation as to how it was set up, so that could be part of the problem.
I wasn't part of the evaluation process when Barracuda was chosen. However, in looking for a new solution, IT Central Station's report was the first documentation I pulled down to take a look and see what the top five solutions are. We're starting the process there to vet each and every one of them to see which solution might be the way to go.
For me, the most important criterion when selecting a vendor is support, after the fact.
The overall performance of the product is great. It's just the fact that we can't get the existing solution over to a new platform. The day-to-day operation is pretty easy, being able to whitelist, blacklist, etc. There is just this one sticking point.
We ultimately may go with a newer variation or a cloud-based version of Barracuda, but right now we have an on-prem. That's our sticking point: Part of the team wants to keep it on-prem, and part of the team wants to put it in the cloud.
I would rate Barracuda at seven out of 10, again because support, after the fact, was not able to migrate their product over to a new platform.
As the world is forever being influenced by the introduction of the information age, technology and technological marvels have exceeded the physical boundaries of communication and shared information worldwide. Through these technological breakthroughs businesses have broken through the matrix with new information technology ideals and platforms.
More specifically we are here to discuss an I.T. appliance that has continued to change the Enterprise architecture of data centers and network security.
I am Matthew McEnroe, a Barracuda Networks product specialist from South Africa and I have been instructed to identify and discuss the Barracuda Web filter as well as the Barracuda Load Balancer within this network review.
The Barracuda Web filter is structured IT solution designed to filter web traffic and reduce latency of inbound HTTP traffic on your internal networks by filtering your web content from the open wire. Personally the organization I am affiliated with have, been be using Barracuda web filter from 3 years and have been offering it to clients for 5 years onwards. We did not use other solutions before, however when we decided to implement a solution like this we did test a couple of other solutions namely Sonic WALL and Aventail as well as a F5 and Juniper networks appliance. After assessing the possible solutions, we chose the one best suited for our business environment and that was the Barracuda Networks solutions.
During the progression of the business a good example of the solution required would be that at a time, we needed anti malware and content filtering along with bandwidth management; choosing the Barracuda solution helped the infrastructure architects to consolidate and optimize our network efficiently. We also found that with the granular control we could strategically implement policies and allow administrators to optimize our bandwidth usage.
The Barracuda solution has improved the way we function by consolidating threat management and network optimization in one standalone appliance.
Considering the web filter, the best features that were most beneficial to the business are the web filter’s application control, content filtering and the simplistic configurations.
This helped our enterprise because we needed a unified secure solution to provide strength and support against application threats and web content threats to which the Barracuda Networks solution succeeded. However considering the Load balancer’s features; the optimal HTTP caching feature definitely helped benefit the business by increasing the response time on our servers. Another stand out feature is the SSL offloading feature, as it effectively reduced the resource usage and day-to-day costs on the application servers.
The Barracuda Instant Replacement license has also benefited the business by helping us stay up to date with the latest appliances and their policy of after 4 years of up-to-date licensing, Barracuda offer a free hardware refresh as policy to get a replacement device at no extra cost with your next license renewal.
The original setup for this solution had not affected the enterprise allocated budget, however calculations for the day-to-day usage of this solution had accumulated a substantial 43 % in savings through the calendar year with the ROI looking promising for our enterprise through the usage of the Barracuda Network solutions.
The enterprise has not experienced critical issues with using the Barracuda solution, however we have had minor issues with the deployment in the past due to conflicting terminology during the first solution implementation and as such have not had recurring issues.
The initial setup of the Barracuda solution is straightforward enough for the technical engineers and minimized the downtime needed for the initial setup. It has a basic GUI that made it easy to find our way through the installation as multiple setup wizards and prompts that will assist you through the entire setup.
A great benefit of the Barracuda Network solutions is the installation’s demo mode; this allows for a 30-day installation period whereby the license will only be activated once configuration has been achieved seamlessly. This way you will not be charged for the license when the device is non-functional on your network.
With the level of customer services received from Barracuda, personally I would rate them a 8/10.We find them polite and assisting, however the time consumed considering the call center sales’ representatives is a lengthy process to link you through to your needed technical advisor.
We have a team of highly skilled In-house engineers who made the attempt of doing the installation a success, we needed minor technical support such as terminology clarification but we handled this directly through Barracuda and they assisted us efficiently in solving this matter.
It is extremely difficult to consider any improvements within the solution as it has provided us assistance with everything that the enterprise required, however if they had a solution that could allow for more WAN optimization with larger disk space, it would greatly be beneficial for more enterprises. At the moment we use steelhead technology in a different appliance and if we could get the same performance from a Barracuda Network solution, optimally we would use it.
For those interested in using the Barracuda Solutions, I would recommend that testing the appliance is key, in eliminating all doubts, questions and concerns on performance that your enterprise may enquire. I would definitely look at the features of other solutions when comparing, we found that some other solutions have niche’ features however our enterprise was not in need of such and the cost of these extra features were more extravagant due to the purposes of these solutions. So if you not going to use these features why would you pay for them?
Barracuda Networks develop I.T. solutions that are compatible for the modern architectures of information technology and continue to improve the excellence that these solutions provide to enterprises worldwide. I believe that the Barracuda networks solution is optimal in our current growing requirements, the web filter and load balancer are efficient well developed solutions that add value in security, cost savings, data handling and overall strategic policy enforcement for any enterprise striving to achieve within the information age. I am Matthew McEnroe a Barracuda product specialist and I trust that this review will assist you in better understanding and selecting network solutions in the future.
Edited and Constructed by Anthony Forbes.
I would have to say for the Web Filter, the best features for me are the application control, content filtering and the ease of use configurations. This helped because we needed to use of all of these in order to provide a secure solution against application threats and web content threats and we could configure the appliance to do this easily.
A good example would be that we needed anti malware and content filtering along with bandwidth management, the Barracuda solution helped me to consolidate this and optimize our network. We also found that with the granular control we could block things strategically and allow administrators to optimize our bandwidth usage. The Barracuda solution has improved the way we function by consolidating threat management and network optimization in one standalone appliance.
It's extremely difficult to say what improvements are needed as everything we needed we could get. I think if they had a product that could allow for more WAN optimization with bigger disk space, it would definitely help. At the moment we use steel-head technology in a different appliance and if we could get the same performance from a Barracuda then we would use that. At the moment that's all that I can think of.
I have used Barracuda Web Filters 310 to higher models.for about for roughly three years now and have had clients that have been using it for more than eight years. I definitely see myself servicing more clients with this solution.
We haven't really experienced any business critical issues with the product, however, we have had minor issues with deployment in the past. It was our first time implementing a solution as such and after that we not have the issues again. There are times where we make changes to our network and come across new issues but they are all minor and with a bit of reading we manage to resolve them quickly.
Not at all. For what we use it for it seems very stable.
Not at all. We find the product very scalable especially with Virtualization.
With the level of customer service from Barracuda I would rate them an 8/10. We find them polite and helpful, however you do wait quite a while to speak to someone.
Technical Support:The level of technical support is great when needed. We have used it a few times when doing migrations and data center moves and we always speak to experienced people that help us gain knowledge in new issues that we come across. I can gladly say that there has not been one question that they have not been able to answer.
We did not use other solutions before, however, when we decided to implement a solution like this we did test a couple of other solutions and we chose the one best suited for our environment and that was the Barracuda product.
The initial setup was straight forward, and it took us very little time to do so, and we minimized the downtime needed for the setup. It has a basic GUI that we could easily find our way around and there are a number of setup wizards and prompts that assist you when beginning the setup. The great thing was that we could do our setup and configurations while the appliance was in demo mode. This meant that if it took us a long time to setup and configure, the license would only be activated when we had completed the setup and everything is running smoothly. This way we were not paying for the license when the device is non-functional.
We have a team of highly skilled in-house engineers who made the attempt of doing the installation themselves and it was a success. We needed minor technical support but we had this directly from Barracuda and they assisted us very well. Their expertise were great.
It is difficult for me to give exact numbers but it’s estimated at a 43% saving annually.
Inclusive of two (along with the Load Balancers) of the high end appliances our total was around US$21,000. Day to day it averages about US$5,000 calculated annually. This number is not an exact figure but merely a rough estimation.
We did, we looked at SonicWall and Aventail we also looked at cloud based content filtering. They are all very good solutions but the Barracuda solution saved us the most money and we could achieve the efficiency we needed that stayed within our budget.
The technology keeps changing and there are newer products coming out all the time, it’s very difficult to stay at the top for a long time.
I would recommend that you get a POC and test it. This was the best way for us to answer all the unsure questions that we had. I would definitely look at the features of other solutions when comparing, we found that some other solutions have more features but we didn't need to use those features and the cost of those solutions were more expensive due to the extra features so if you not going to use them why pay for them? Make sure you test, and compare apples with apples.